


Truth

by kineticstars



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Dilaudid, Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Religious Guilt, Sad Spencer Reid, Withdrawal, a lot about religion, prison reid, season 12, seriously a lot about drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:55:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27744841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kineticstars/pseuds/kineticstars
Summary: Emily assured him  it wasn’t his fault, that things would be set right, but Spencer didn’t believe it. He was a sinner getting what he deserved.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	Truth

**Author's Note:**

> Writer who doesn’t believe in modern Christianity writes a story full of Christian religious references. 
> 
> This fic is a little different than what I usually write. It’s pretty heavy I guess. I had fun writing it (I kind of died towards the end though), so enjoy!
> 
> Credit to the criminal minds writers for some dialogue directly quoted from cm episodes

Before Hankel, Spencer Reid marked religion as unscientific and illogical. Then he glimpsed the afterlife, and that was all the proof he needed.

Spencer Reid had gotten a glimpse of heaven and from that moment on he knew God was real and that God thought of him favorably.

Spencer wasn’t sure exactly how he would describe his beliefs. Spiritual? Definitely. Religious? Not so much. But he felt some sort of obligation to God for smiling on him that night in a shack when he’d died and been brought back to life.

_“This brother of yours had been dead and came to life, had been lost and was found.”_

Spencer’s innocence lasted for approximately one day.

He shot Tobias Hankel and took two vials of Dilaudid with him.

When Spencer returned home he cried, and he prayed, and he read the entire Bible in three days.

_“There is a rejoicing before the angels of God over one repenting sinner.”_

“I’m sorry,” Spencer whispered to the Almighty each time his trembling hands opened the drawer where the vials were hidden.

“I’m sorry,” he said as tears streamed down his face and memories flashed through his mind while he pulled the plunger on the needle and stuck it into his arm.

“Please, God, forgive me,” he slurred as his mind slipped away and so did the nausea and pain and fear.

_Am I really repentant if I keep doing it?_

Spencer asked himself that each time he came down, staring at his red-rimmed eyes and pale face in the mirror.

Was it really so bad if it made him feel so good?

_“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil.”_

Could it really be bad if it quelled the fear and trepidation he felt every second he was without it? Stopped him from feeling sick to his stomach the longer he tried to stop? Stopped him from thinking about the past that haunted him or the job that wore him down every day?

Eventually Spencer got clean. He had too; the vials ran out and he didn’t know where to get more. It took sleepless nights and panic attacks and weeks lying pathetic and sick on the bathroom floor, hurriedly cleaning himself up before work so his colleagues wouldn’t suspect anything. Weeks spent lying to his friends, and lying to himself, and lying to God.

_“The Lord detests deceptive people.”_

There were some times where his body cried out for it. After an especially hard case when he needed a reliable way to de-stress and reading wasn’t enough. He tried getting drunk once but it wasn’t the same.

(Really, it started as a few glasses of wine, then he ended up blacked out on the couch, so he avoided alcohol, too.)

Avoidance worked for a while. Avoid anything that reminded him of it or could pull him back in. Spencer knew the facts. He lived the facts. Addiction was life-threatening. But Spencer wasn’tafraid of the addiction. The high was pure bliss, an incoherent state where nothing could touch him. Every time he craved it he couldn’t convince himself it was wrong. Being without it felt somuch worse.

_“Then desire becomes pregnant and gives birth to sin, and sin grows up and brings forth its offspring death.”_

After Prentiss faked her death the temptation increased. It got harder to resist, harder not to throw caution to the wind and find a way to start using again.

Ten weeks.

That’s how long Spencer fought and went to JJ’s house and cried, and each time she wrapped him up in a hug that wasn’t nearly as comforting as the one Dilaudid could give him.

Then Spencer found out Emily was alive, and the pain he’d gone through was pointless. Everyone expected him to move on, but how could he?

“What if I had started taking Dilaudid again? Would you have let me?” he’d asked JJ.

“You didn’t,” she’d replied, almost dismissively.

“Yeah, but I thought about it.”

He considered praying for the first time in years, but the guilt was overwhelming. The guilt of facing the fact that he’d almost failed. The guilt he felt for failing God, who’d saved him and counted him worthy years ago.

—

_“I will repay the full amount due for their error and their sin.”_

Karma, fate, God’s will. Whatever it was Spencer couldn’t escape it.

He was lying in wait for his punishment to arrive.

He thought it was Maeve’s death, but things deteriorated from there. Gideon died, Morgan left, his mom got worse. As it turned out none of those things were what God had in mind to teach Spencer his lesson.

Spencer wasn’t sure how it happened, all he felt was an eerily familiar calmness spreading across his mind and a sharp pain on his hand as everything faded away. Then he found himself in a prison in Mexico with the name of a dead woman on his arm. Spencer rocked back and forth in his cell, arms wrapped around his body as he tried to comfort himself and he heard a voice telling him everything was going to be alright.

Spencer’s heart sank as he was told heroin was found in his system. The drug left his body and a guilty conscience replaced it. Ten years of fighting and he’d failed. Emily assured himit wasn’t his fault, that things would be set right, but Spencer didn’t believe it. He was a sinner getting what he deserved.

He complied calmly with procedure, in handcuffs on the jet back to Washington. He tried to keep his emotions level as he was escorted to jail where he would stay before appearing in court. And he asked to be forgiven for everything he’d done.

Spencer spent his first few nights in jail wide awake, afraid of the broken images in his mind from the day that changed everything, wishing he had something to make things a little more bearable. Attached to the memories he was avoiding was the feeling of how his mind slipped away while he was drugged, comprehending nothing, covered in a warm blackness. Spencer wanted to feel that nothing again. He’d wanted it for days. Anything would be better than the confusion and anxiety and overwhelm he’d experienced for the past week.

Emily visited Spencer, telling him she’d found a great lawyer to help with his case. All Spencer could give in response was rapid apologies. It was his fault, he should never have gone to Mexico, it was a stupid decision. Prentiss told him not to worry and to put his faith in justice.

_“The Lord loves justice.”_

Spencer’s lawyer, Fiona, asked him to explain what happened in Mexico.

“I did not kill her,” he said.

She let out an exasperated sigh. “What I can't work with is a client who lies to me, because those lies will always come back to bite us in the ass. And by "us", I mean you. Lying to me could mean the difference between going home or spending the rest of your life in a cage. Do you understand me?”

“The truth will set you free,” Spencer whispered to himself as he was escorted out of the interrogation room. He didn’t kill anyone.

He would never kill anyone.

He hadn’t done anything wrong.

That wasn’t quite true, and he knew it.

God knew it, too.

Spencer was denied bail and would spend three months behind bars awaiting trial.

_“The truth will set you free.”_

Spencer hadn’t lied. He’d done everything right. So why weren’t things getting better?

He’d been transferred to federal prison since local jails were overcrowded. “I’m not supposed to be here,” he told a guard as he entered a room filled with beds and prisoners. Was that the truth? Is this where he was supposed to end up? A federal agent in a room of felons? His own handcrafted Hell?

Spencer barely survived the three month long ordeal. He was afraid, not just of the other prisoners but also of what he was becoming. He was afraid of how he perked up slightly hearing people transported heroin into the facility. He was afraid of how badly he wanted something, anything, to give him a break from reality. He was afraid to fall asleep because the torment didn’t stop then; he was plagued by terrible nightmares and wished more than anything to stop feeling and comprehending, even being. At night when he couldn’t sleep he gazed at the light scars from old track marks on his arm in the light of the moon. His friends would visit and tell him to stay strong and it would be over soon. But the months dragged on and Spencer lived every day reminded of his sins.

Honesty didn’t work in prison. Truth didn’t get freedom, and it took Spencer far too long to realize that. Truth didn’t get freedom, favors did. He’d been asked to transport drugs into the prison with the laundry. He wouldn’t do it, he decided. He was a good person.

Was he still a good person after he poisoned the batch? After he stayed silent watching Malcolm cough up blood in front of him and never admitting it was he who caused it? Never apologizing, only spending the night pacing and running his hands through his hair and panicking. Panicking not because he was sorry, but because he didn’t want to get caught. Panicking not because he was repentant, but because he liked it. He liked seeing the prisoners who tormented him suffer.

_“Mine is vengeance, says the Lord.”_

Lewis came to interview him shortly after the incident to find out exactly what happened in Mexico. Maybe his memory was better, she suggested. He should have remembered, but he couldn’t, because the most important part of the story was the fact that he was drugged. He was drugged and he could have done anything. He was drugged and that meant he was high and closed off from reality. God, he wanted to feel that again so badly.

Spencer paced back and forth around the interrogation room, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. He was a sinner, he deserved this, he must have done something to end up in this situation. So Spencer said he did it. He said he killed Nadie Ramos, partially because of the guilt and partially because he hadn’t slept in who knows how long. Lewis didn’t believe him, but maybe she should have.

He thought he was done when he got out. He thought it was all over when he heard the prison gates close behind him, and he could forget what he did and the feelings and desires he knew were wrong.

_“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”_

Then Cat Adams kidnapped his mom and put Spencer through a mind bending game that left him more confused and afraid than when he went into prison, and he tried to kill her. Spencer wanted so badly to not feel again and ignore all the anger and pain and hate that destroyed him, and he slid down the wall outside of the interrogation room, racked by sobs and pleas for forgiveness. Job 34:10 rang in his mind: “It is impossible for God to do wrong, and for the Almighty to act unjustly.” God didn’t make mistakes; Spencer deserved everything that was happening to him.

In the end his mom was safe. She was barely aware of what happened anyway, and Spencer put on a brave face as he hugged her and pretended everything was alright when it wasn’t. Hesat at the desk in his apartment, head in his hands, tears rolling down his face. He couldn’t do it anymore, he really couldn’t. Spencer didn’t care who he was disappointing or what the consequences would be; all he wanted was peace. Freedom. Guaranteed freedom that no matter how bad things got he could have an escape.

Was it really a sin if it made him feel good?

_“The spirit is eager, but the flesh is weak.”_


End file.
